More Plato

So my attempts to eneter the discussion on the group page feel very much like the way Stephen described his potential forays into Chinese History: I canget away with saying all kinds of stupid things as I lack any background or context. But I figure the education comes in the attempt. That being said, I'm getting a lot out of the dialogue as it is forming and moving on into the next readings.

The one question that I wrote down in my notes while reading and thought too stupid to ask, is still perhaps the best question: how do we define 'reason" and "passion"? The answer, I think, is to being with the definitions in the texts.

Genesis and The "Q", seem to have it all focused on "good" and "evil". But the players in the dramas of Genesis seem to need to be told by God what the distinction is. And while they are presented with choice, it seems to imply that there is or will be no inherent understanding of the difference by mankind, only a knowledge that punishment follows for disobeyance, reward for good behavior. "God's Will" seems to trump "Man's Better Nature". I suppose that might be the fallout of having eaten the apple and been cast out of the Garden of Eden.

A very clever posting implied that there is no inherent tension between good and evil in Plato's system, but that it was made up of varying, circular degrees of good. I'm not sure I understand that, though. It seems clear that there is a tension between "equilibrium" and "disequilibrium", and that "disequilibrium" is the natural state, and "equilibrium" the desired state, to be sought but never accomplished in life.

This tension, while it doesn't resonate with the big sways of good and evil the way the bible and the Q do, does seem be accompanied by a reward system: a star for the achievers of intelligence, and womanhood or animal-hood or dung-beetledom for those who, by lack of education, lack of god-likeness, fall short.

I couldn't help but feel, albeit in my first-ever reading of Plato, that there was an underlying passion to his argument. I've ordered a book on the concept of intelligent design in Plato from the library. I'll see if I can expand on this notion in some kind of (hopefully) intelligent way.